Sunday, November 14, 2010

This is something like the fourth bananabread recipe I’ve posted, which perhaps speaks to a dearth of culinary creativity – but I quite like banana bread. Besides, given how often I over-estimate my weekly consumption of said fruit and end up with brown, cloyingly sweet-smelling bananas rotting atop my countertop, I find it best to have options for how to dispose of them.

For whatever reason, this is my new favorite “traditional” banana bread. There’s nothing odd or idiosyncratic about this except that I add a slug of dark rum to the batter to intensify its flavors. The rum makes the batter smell and taste quite alcoholic, but once the loaf has baked you’ll be left with the merest hint of booze flavor. Rum isn’t among my favorite hard liquors – if the flavor were oppressive, this wouldn’t appeal to me.

In keeping with my usual tradition, I use vanilla yoghurt in place of milk, sour cream, or double the butter. The loaf has a moist, tender crumb and a substantial texture. It’s nice stuff.

As a general rule, I use walnuts and pecans interchangeably, but I think you want walnuts here. You definitely want to toast them.

2 comments:

I am one of those people who like to eat green bananas... and I rarely finish them so I love making banana bread... I never thought of putting rum in it...duh!! I've never tried malted milk powder before and don't know where to get it... but will make this bread for sure... looks wonderful!

You can find malted milk powder at some grocery stores -- it's often with the powdered milk or the ice cream toppings. I've also ordered it from amazon in a pinch: http://www.amazon.com/Carnation-Malted-Milk-Original-13-Ounce/dp/B001EQ4HVC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290354623&sr=8-1